


and we're not there yet

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: After Enbarr specifically, Ambiguous Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, one-sided claude/annette if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25683838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: The war doesn't end with taking Enbarr and the fall of the Empire. Annette takes this news rather poorly.Felix is surprisingly comforting about it.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	and we're not there yet

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in Verdant Wind riiiight after you take Enbarr and find Hubert's letter about "those who slither in the dark". It did always seem like it would be a shock like "so the war isn't quite over hang in there for a bit longer"...
> 
> ~~also lately been obsessed with Felix and Annette kinda sorta in a relationship during war phase but being bad at talking about it~~
> 
> Anyway, hope you like it!

Annette hadn’t meant to overhear Claude and the professor talking. She’d helped Mercie and Marianne search for wounded after the battle, doing what she could to stabilize them before enlisting fresher soldiers to carry them to where they set up a makeshift infirmary outside the palace’s walls (reluctant to venture too deep inside). But then she passed closer to Claude and the professor where the former gripped a letter in hand.

Annette didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the possibilities spun round and round her mind even before Claude confirmed what she suspected when she confronted him about it on the second day marching out of Enbarr.

“The war’s not over yet, is it?” she demanded.

Claude sighed, looking more exhausted than she’d ever seen him - or than he’d ever let her see. He toyed with one of the tassels on his uniform and replied, “Our war with the Empire is.”

She crossed her arms and frowned. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

He tapped his fingertips against the table where a giant map of Fodlan spread. He traced a route from Enbarr to Garreg Mach to…somewhere in Goneril territory. “There’s still a fight ahead,” he admitted, “but did you really think it would all end with the Empire’s fall, Annette? There will be strongholds to take down, though admittedly none as difficult as Fort Merceus, and—”

“Oh, save it!” Annette exclaimed as a rash of frustration gripped her. “You just—I—ugh!” Heat pricked at her eyes when she considered the cost of the war so far, and even if she never had to fight another friend again she couldn’t get back the ones she’d lost.

Or the family she’d lost…

“You don’t have to stay, Annette,” Claude told her. His lips twitched into the barest hint of a smile, though she didn’t know him well enough to determine it genuine. “Your quarrel was with the Empire like any of my other allies from Faerghus, so I’d understand if you—”

“I’m staying,” Annette said, “but not for you.”

“Fair enough,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not so naive to think my old schoolmates are here because they like my sparkling personality, but I would like to hope some of you agree with my cause.”

“Your cause,” she echoed, because she couldn’t remember Claude talking about any sort of “cause” at length, just vague promises of opening Fodlan up to the rest of the world once the Empire fell.

“My cause,” Claude repeated. He pulled a camp stool out from under the table and perched in it before tugging out a second one. “I can tell you all about it, if you like.” He smiled properly this time, almost hopefully, and Annette almost felt guilty about what she said next.

“No, I think I’ll just…turn in early tonight,” she told him. She doubted her composure would last her much longer, and Claude was the last person she wanted to watch her crumple.

“Of course,” he said, his smile dropping slightly. “Good night, Annette.”

Annette didn’t bother replying, just shoved her way out of pavilion and into camp. The noise of it assaulted her, far too jubilant to reflect the coiling of dread in her abdomen and the lump stuck in her throat.

She thought - _hoped_ \- it would end with Enbarr, that she could go home and tell her mother she failed for good and maybe from there she could carve out a place for herself in whatever new post-war world existed and even find in her life a space for—

She collided headlong with something solid. She stumbled backwards, heart in her throat and clutching at her head before strong hands grabbed her shoulders and kept her from falling.

“You should watch where you’re going.”

Annette glanced up, prepared to offer some lie about how she _had_ been watching, thank you very much, she had a lot on her mind! But her lips parted in surprise when she found Felix staring down at her.

And he still hadn’t dropped his hands, at least until a hint of color filled his cheeks and he stepped away from her, as if he’d never touched her before, as if she wasn’t intimately familiar with the feeling of his hands on her.

But rather than dwelling on that and the heat on her own face, she wondered, “Shouldn’t you be resting?” Her gaze trailed to his shoulder, searching out where just a day ago she helped Mercie replace a bandage.

“Shouldn’t you?” he retorted. He crossed his arms before his gaze flicked past her and his nose wrinkled. “What were you doing w—in the command pavilion?”

She mirrored his posture. “I was just talking to Claude about the end of the war,” she told him. “I thought”—the stiffness eased from her shoulders in place of a shudder—”Enbarr would be the end, but it’s not.” She covered her face to muffle a sniffle before rubbing at her burning eyes.

“I suppose…not,” Felix said rather lamely, but his own expression slackened from irritation to a frown. He rested his hand against her elbow, that one stupid touch shooting warmth into her arm, but it only made it easier for a sob to burst from her.

Right there in the middle of a war camp.

Annette buried her face in her hands and swallowed the next one. She didn’t try to resist when Felix tugged her along, but she felt cold when he let her go to lift the flap of his tent.

“Come on,” he told her, nudging her inside before following and dropping the flap.

It plunged them into something resembling dusk, with enough light from torches outside filtering in through the canvas that after a few blinks she could clearly see the planes of Felix’s face outlined, even through a film of tears. She bit her lip, as if that would keep them from leaking out, and avoided watching him unbuckle his belt and shrug out of his needlessly thick coat.

“Why are you still standing?” he wondered once he draped it over a camp stool.

“You d-did just use your only chair for your coat,” she observed with a sniff.

“Then sit on my bedroll?” he suggested, as if it was a question, and in it she could hear him calling her silly, or foolish, or ridiculous but without any of his bite.

Annette could count a number of reasons why she’d rather perch on his stool than sit on his bedroll, but she doubted he would think any of them good enough. So she dismissed her protests and sat at the base, pulling her legs up to rest her forehead against her knees. Her eyes pinched shut as she inhaled a shuddering breath.

Felix dropped down beside her with a sigh. She felt him shifting beside her again, and when she glanced up he was unlacing and tugging off his boots.

“I-I’m sorry,” she told him, realizing he probably did want to sleep soon. She unfurled her legs and made to stand up. “I’ll go to my own—” Her voice died in her throat when his fingers wrapped around her wrist.

“Annette,” he said, and the sincere note in his usual gruff tone gave her pause and made her heart skip a beat, “if I didn’t want you here I never would’ve told you to come in.”

Her ears warmed under her hair. “H-how’s your shoulder?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

She didn’t think about how she found him clutching at it while blood seeped through his fingers while insisting she needn’t waste her strength healing it. But she tried to relax, at least because it was Felix, and she knew he cared even if he didn’t - couldn’t - always say so.

His hand brushed hers almost hesitantly, which was rather silly considering he’d touched her far more brazenly before…though he never could shake his reticence in initiating, as if he thought she’d change her mind every time.

Annette glanced at him, catching his eye before his gaze swiveled away from her.

“Did he do or say something to upset you?” he said then, and though he kept his tone level she could hear the undercurrent of something stronger.

It startled her, and improbably a smile plucked at her lips despite the lump in her throat. “Who, Claude?” When Felix scowled, she shrugged. “He just admitted that the war isn’t as over as we thought after taking Enbarr, and I…” She trailed off, unable to continue as that same surge of emotion that gripped her in the pavilion threatened to overwhelm her again.

She leaned her head against Felix’s shoulder and confessed, “I’m tired, Felix.”

He stiffened ever so slightly beside her, but before she could withdraw with a mumbled apology he rested a hand on the back of her head, holding her closer. “Then rest,” he said in a low voice. His chin rested on the crown of her head.

Annette focused on steadying her breathing for a few heartbeats. “That’s not really what I meant by tired.”

Felix’s side shifted against her with his own breathing, as his hand slid down to her shoulder. “I know,” he admitted.

A few months ago she never would’ve dreamed of crying in front of Felix, much less of him attempting to comfort her, but something…shifted between them first when they spoke in the greenhouse and then when she found him at the training grounds bleeding from the hand holding a splintered training sword.

“I just don’t want to fight anymore,” she mumbled, burying her face in his shirt so she spoke into it. “I don’t want to watch anymore of my friends die o-or kill them myself…” In her mind’s eye she was back at Fort Merceus, watching Caspar - who danced with her at the ball when they were students, who cheered her up after a kitchen mishap - sprint at her with an ax swinging high over his head before she struck him with a Cutting Gale to the neck.

“I don’t…I don’t want to see”—she sniffed and wiped at her itching nose with the back of her hand—”you hurt a-again either.”

And then Felix withdrew his arm, leaving her side cold though he didn’t pull away from her. “I’m fine,” he assured her again.

“Maybe next time you won’t be,” Annette noted. She straightened to rub at her eyes, at where tears slipped past her eyelids and ran down her cheeks. “Y-you—I don’t know i-if you’ve n-noticed, Felix, but you…the way you fight, it’s…it’s d-different.”

His forehead furrowed with confusion as he regarded her. “What do you mean?”

“You used to be…well, not exactly c-cautious,” she explained as the images played out in her head, “but not as—less reckless. Y-you take more risks like you’re—as if you’re p-prioritizing winning over s-surviving.” Her gaze flicked up to his face, despite the ache in her chest, and she saw the instant his own eyes dropped and he turned his head away from her. Her breath caught, halfway between a sob and a gasp, but she rested her hand on his knee. “F-Felix?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment, where even the sounds of the war camp beyond the confines of the tent faded away. Annette’s heart beat in her throat, waiting, wishing (nothing new with him), wanting - and wondering if she should regret being so…blatant with him.

It was difficult to tell where she stood with him day to day, when on one they might share meals and he might steal a kiss where no one could see them, while on others he shut her out entirely.

Difficult, frustrating, _confusing_ , and she grew weary of it.

“I-I’m going to my own tent,” Annette announced, and hoped none of her hurt showed in her voice. She made to stand, only for Felix to catch her hand and tug her back down.

“Wait, don’t—Annette,” he said, and when she glanced at him, unable to keep the surprise from her expression, he rubbed his face with his other hand. “You…I’m sorry,” he eventually settled on. “I don’t know what you need from me.”

She barely knew what she needed from him either, at least in this moment. Another time she might’ve asked him to kiss her, to distract them both with the simplicity of giving and taking pleasure, but that scarcely filled the hole in her chest left behind by perpetual grief and stress.

“I just…I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. She offered him a tremulous smile ruined by yet another sniffle. “D-don’t—or be more c-careful in battle again, since i-it looks like there are more ahead.”

Felix inched closer to her but didn’t quite reach out to touch her again, though his grip on her hand tightened. “I can try,” he promised, “though I don’t know what sort of enemies we’ll be fighting.”

“I-I know,” she conceded. “I g-guess that does make it a little…tricky, but you were always up for a challenge.” Her nose wrinkled, and she dared to lean towards him to cup his jaw. “J-just don’t go, um, don’t go losing your life for them. Th-they’re not—it’s not worth it to…to me.”

Felix’s jaw twitched under her hand as he grimaced. His eyes slid shut and he said, “Well, the Death Knight _is_ dead now, so I doubt anyone will be so worth the risk.”

Annette scowled, though his lips ticked up into the barest hint of a smirk. “Felix,” she groaned.

“I promise,” he told her. He covered her hand with his before easing it off. Her face warmed when he kissed her palm. “You be on your guard too. I’m…I’d rather not”—his gaze drifted past her again, towards the tent flap—”lose anyone else either.”

She nodded, and a smile found its way onto her face. Who knew Felix could be so…blatant about his affection?

Well, it was hardly a declaration of love, and Annette wasn’t so naive to think he would be forthcoming, whether he felt so strongly about her or not.

A sigh escaped her, and she wondered how long he might keep her waiting or if she would have to take matters into her own hands.

“What now?” Felix wondered, quirking an eyebrow at her.

Annette shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “You just…nothing. Maybe it is time to rest.”

“Stay then,” he said, and when her heart skipped a beat out of pure shock and she stared at him his cheeks colored and he grumbled, “It’s dark outside. You’ll trip over something if you leave now, or run straight into someone’s sword.”

Annette decidedly didn’t point out she was perfectly capable (unfortunately) of tripping over thin air in daylight…but considering how she collided with Felix himself not so long ago, perhaps he had a point.

And it was as good an excuse as any.

She unlaced and tugged off her own boots, setting them beside Felix’s before he unclasped her shawl without prompting. Her face warmed - not that he’d never helped her undress before - when he handed it to her and she folded it neatly to sit on top of his coat.

They settled down on his bedroll together, still mostly clothed - easier while on the march - and facing each other. She held her hands close to her chest while Felix rested his head on an arm, his forehead wrinkling.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” she wondered in a low voice.

He shrugged, which looked odd done while lying on his side.

“Maybe it would be easier if you…held me,” Annette dared to suggest.

She held her breath for a long heartbeat as Felix either contemplated her idea or pretended he didn’t hear, until he draped an arm over her waist and tugged her closer. She couldn’t help smiling as he tucked her under his chin, as warmth bloomed in her chest and she felt his heartbeat under her cheek.

“You know you kick in your sleep, right?” Felix complained after a few beats of fidgeting.

“Too late to complain after you’ve already asked me to sleep here,” Annette teased. A giggle burst from her, at odds with the fact she was sure her cheeks were still stained with tear tracks, but as often as she despaired of him, Felix had that effect on her.

She wrapped an arm around him, her hand splayed over his back, and knew that despite the close quarters and the day’s turmoil, it would be a good night for rest.

**Author's Note:**

> At this point i have divergent netteflix headcanons based on specific non-AM routes ha. Too much time spent thinking about them there, i guess.
> 
> The other day i watched a "types of fan fic writers" video and i learned that i am the "one-shot master". sadly all the fics i've finished lately are just really short, and i can't promise i'll post anything, well, longer than this until i unleash my bang fics next month. in any case, thank you for reading my dumb short fics in the meantime, and i would love to hear what you think of this one!


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